Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was a Christian woman dedicated to God and fulfilling His calling in her life. She felt God calling her to serve people when she was a young adult and followed that calling around the world and back. Florence spent many years trying to get the training she needed to help care for and heal soldiers; she was blocked by her parents and society’s standards for a single woman but she didn’t let that pull her down for very long. She looked for and found good Christian people willing to help her succeed in her mission of bettering hospital conditions. Florence left her family several times to go find the education she needed, and finally to work at a hospital for wounded soldiers in the Crimea. While she was there she visited many other ARMY hospitals and helped them improve their conditions for the patients. After the war, Florence went back to England and worked at bringing those same improvements to the civilian hospitals in her own country. Florence petitioned many political leaders to change the conditions in the local hospitals, and was met with both resistance and approval. She helped to improve the hospitals, and then worked to start a nursing school. She hoped to give nursing a better reputation as well as instructing and training up very well-equipped nurses to work in the new, better hospital settings. Florence lived all of her life following God’s calling, and doing His work no matter how difficult it was. She is primarily responsible for bringing cleanliness, personal care, and good food to hospitals as well as giving nursing higher standards and a greatly improved reputation.